Terra industries raises $18m as Ghana drone factory nears opening, London office launches

Nigerian defence-technology company Terra Industries has pulled in another $18 million, pushing its total seed funding to $52 million as the company gears up to open a major drone manufacturing plant in Ghana and establish its first office outside Africa, in London.

• Terra Industries raised $18M more (total $52M) as it preps a Ghana drone factory and a new London office.

• The Ghana plant, opening Q4, aims to become Africa's largest drone factory, targeting 50,000 units/year by 2028.

• Terra's tech already secures ~$11B in African infrastructure, with backing from 8VC, SV Angel and new investors.

The fresh capital will go toward strengthening Terra's manufacturing, engineering, operations and business-development teams, alongside funding deployments across Africa and other Global South markets, according to the company.

It marks another leap for a startup that has moved quickly from its 2024 founding into becoming one of the continent's most closely watched defence-tech players.

The centrepiece of this expansion is Terra's Pax-2 facility in Ghana, which is scheduled to come online in the fourth quarter of the year. At 34,000 square feet, the plant is expected to become the largest drone factory anywhere in Africa once it's fully operational, more than tripling the floor area of Terra's existing factory in Abuja, Nigeria.

The Ghana investment builds on plans the company first signalled earlier in the year, when it talked about expanding its manufacturing footprint beyond Nigeria.

What was once a broader ambition now has a concrete address, timeline and production target attached to it. Pax-2 is designed to eventually produce up to 50,000 systems annually by 2028, though that figure remains a company projection rather than current output, and the facility isn't operational yet.

This latest round follows a $34 million raise the company closed in February, at which point Terra said it was ramping up production of drones, surveillance towers and unmanned ground vehicles.

The jump from $34 million to $52 million in a matter of months underlines how fast investor interest in African defence technology is moving and how central Ghana has become to that story.

Terra was co-founded in 2024 by Nathan Nwachuku and Maxwell Maduka. The company builds autonomous systems across air, land and sea, including standard drones, interceptor drones, surveillance towers and unmanned ground vehicles.

Its Abuja factory, spanning 15,000 square feet, remains the company's original manufacturing base and will continue operating alongside the new Ghana plant rather than being replaced by it.

The new funding round drew backing from existing investors 8VC, Silent Ventures, Nova Global, Belief Capital and SV Angel, all of whom returned for this round. Two new backers, Norleo Space Investments and Grant Gordon, also joined.

Alongside the Ghana factory news, Terra confirmed it will open an office in London, its first outside the African continent, while keeping all manufacturing operations based in Africa.

The company has also flagged further expansion plans targeting the Gulf region, South America and South Asia, suggesting London will function more as a strategic and commercial hub than a production site.

Terra says its technology is already deployed to help secure critical infrastructure across multiple African countries, including power plants, mines and other assets the company values at roughly $11 billion.

That existing footprint gives context to why investors are backing a bigger production push now: Terra isn't just building capacity for hypothetical future contracts; it's scaling to meet demand it says already exists.

The timing also lines up with a broader push across the continent for locally built security and defence alternatives. African governments and infrastructure operators have increasingly looked for homegrown options in a sector where the continent still captures only a small slice of global defence-technology investment.

Terra's expansion positions it to compete for a larger share of that spending, both within Nigeria and Ghana and across other African markets looking to reduce reliance on foreign-built systems.

For Ghana, the Pax-2 facility represents a direct stake in Terra's next production phase rather than a symbolic branch office. The plant's scale, its projected output, and its role as the company's flagship manufacturing site going forward all point to Ghana becoming central to Terra's growth strategy, even as Nigeria continues to host the company's founding team and original factory.

It's worth being clear about what has and hasn't happened yet. The $18 million raise is confirmed, and the total seed funding now stands at $52 million.

What hasn't happened yet is the factory opening itself, which Terra has pinned to the fourth quarter, and the 50,000-unit annual production target, which is tied to 2028 rather than an immediate figure.

Investors appear to be betting on the trajectory the company has shown so far, from a $34 million raise in February to this latest close just months later, alongside its existing infrastructure-protection contracts across the continent.

Whether Terra hits its Q4 opening timeline and its longer-term production targets will be worth watching closely, particularly given how much attention African defence tech has drawn from global investors this year.

For now, the company has cash, expanding investor backing, and a factory under construction in Ghana that it says will be the biggest of its kind on the continent.